Erstellt am: 11. 9. 2010 - 11:39 Uhr
Saving the Tigers
It’s both the Chinese Year of the Tiger and the UN International Year of Biodiversity – an opportunity to galvanize efforts to save the magnificent and iconic large cat from extinction. Tigers now top the WWF list of the 10 most important endangered species and the heads of state of the 13 countries that still have wild tiger populations are meeting this weekend in Vladivostok, Russia, to try to agree on conservation strategies to double the global population of wild tigers by 2022.
WWF
Experts say that whatever action is agreed upon, it had better be drastic. In the past 100 years, global wild tiger populations have been reduced by 95%. It’s estimated that there are only 3,200 tigers left on the planet, with that figure continuing to dwindle year by year. Indeed despite several high prestige conservation initiatives, the number of tigers in the wild has halved in the past decade. So in many ways this is the last roll of the dice in the battle to save them.
Dr. Harald Schwammer, the Vice Director of the Schönbrunn Tiergarten, blames the decimation of the Tigers primarily on the rampant destruction of Tiger’s natural habitat but adds that poaching is rife across Asia.
Poaching of Tigers is a lucrative business. Debbie Banks, a senior tiger investigator with the Environmental Investigation Agency says that organised criminal networks are playing an increasing role in a trade in which a single pelt can fetch up to $12,500 in China. But it is the trade in body parts that is proving most lucrative for the poachers - a business based on a widespread Oriental belief that tiger bones have almost miraculous medicinal properties. The scale of the problem is illustrated by the attest of a notorious poacher and trader called Sansar Chand in 2005. Indian Authorities say this one man was responsible for the killing of 1,000 tigers.
While the number of wild tigers continues to fall, the number of cats in captivity is rising. There are reportedly around 5,000 animals kept on “tiger farms” in China, many of them kept in deplorable conditions in cramped cages. Why would you farm tigers? Well many are outwardly labeled as ‘safari parks’ and bases for breeding projects, but campaigners says this is just a front and the tigers are killed to feed the trade in body parts. Officially China has outlawed the sale of goods from these farms, but Debbie Banks says this law is regularly flouted: “In a number of premises, not only in China but across South-East Asia, tiger bones are being turned into tiger bone wine and being leaked on to the market.”
WWF
Banks explains that the ‘wine’, which is sometimes brazenly sold in tiger-shaped bottles, is a coveted status symbol that an ambitious businessman might give to his boss when trying to curry favour. She says the tigers on the farms are often malnourished and farm owners use this as an excuse to sell the body parts – saying it helps them fund their breeding programs.
Grace Gabriel, the Asia Regional Director of the International Fund for Animal Welfare, says that by feeding the market for tiger parts these farming businessmen are “cultivating a new demand for dead tigers, fuelling the illegal trade in wildlife and stimulating the poaching of wild tigers." She has visited a farm and dismisses the farmer’s claims that their breeding programs are beneficial to the species. Collectively in China, the farms boast an annual reproduction rate of 800 tigers, but Gabriel says that the programs have little in common with scientific efforts to rehabilitate the species in the wild. The goal is fast breeding from a very narrow genetic pool, says Gabriel, adding “a lot of the cubs born on these farms are deformed.”
The farmers welcome tourists who are told that the tigers are being prepared for a future reintroduction into the wild. This justifies the “spectacles” of live-feeding sessions where, for an extra charge, tourists can see chickens or oxen thrown in to be attacked by tigers. There is plenty of distasteful footage of the practice posted on the internet. It’s a show and the tigers have often already been fed and are no longer hungry.
On the park/farm that Grace Gabriel visited a sort of coliseum had been built. Inside the captive tigers clawed at but did not kill the oxen and were dragged off so the show could be repeated later. It’s incredibly cruel and Gabriel rubbishes the official claims that the tigers are being prepared for life in the wild: “They can’t hunt. The only prey they recognize is livestock.”
If you are travelling in a country and are offered a trip to such “safari parks”, tiger campaigners urge you to just say no.
WWF
But can tourism benefit tiger conservation if it is well-managed? Eco-tourism has been credited with persuading Rwandans that gorillas are worth much more to local communities alive than dead and that tourism offers a better long-term future than logging or poaching. Could the same be true of the wild tigers on India’s 37 vast reserves? Apart from the obvious incentives to leave the land to the tigers instead of giving into the demands of India’s burgeoning human population, the income from eco-tourism, so the argument goes, can be directed into scientific monitoring projects and anti-poaching units.
Accompanied by guides you do have the opportunity to spot wild tigers from open-topped jeeps or atop elephants on the reserves. Richard Thomas of the wildlife trade monitoring group Traffic did just that and got to within about 10 metres of a wild tiger: “You could almost look straight into its eyes. You could tell how powerful it was. It’s such a superb animal. My heart almost stopped.”
But the reserves, which bring money for a sustainable conservation effort, are a double edged sword in the fight to rescue tigers. Oversubscribed sighting-trips can cost as little as 600 rupees, around 12 Euros, and some people say the Tigers are being "loved to death" by visitors. Journalist Geeta Pandey became sceptical about the numbers gaining access to the tigers after she sighted a tiger on a trip to a reserve in Rajasthan: “We were really quite close and then suddenly all these trucks and jeeps pulled up bringing so many people. Experts say people should not be allowed to get so close to the animals.” Richard Thomas points out that there have always been retreat-areas on the reserves where no tourists are allowed, but the circus-like atmosphere of package tiger sightings is clearly a concern. Indeed this year the Indian government decided to limit tourist access to the tigers – denying visitors access to some of the country’s reserves.
But while they can keep tourists out, it seems the government is incapable of keeping the poachers out. Some conservationists believe the true number of tigers left in India may be little more than half the official tally due partly to shoddy counting but also poaching. In January 2005 the Sariska national park was forced to admit that all of its supposed 35 tigers had been killed in an incident that conservationists called “a national disgrace”. In an attempt to stem the loss, the group Tiger Watch has started hiring local people as informants against the poachers for 3,500 rupees (around 60 Euros) a month as informants. But the killing goes on: this year Panna Reserve in Madhya Pradesh province announced it had lost all of its estimated 30 animals.
“At this rate,” says Geeta Pandey, “experts fear that soon we will not have a single tiger left in the wild.”
WWF